


Thirteen

by Edwardina



Category: Firefly
Genre: Angst, F/M, Sibling Incest, crazy space incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-06-27
Updated: 2006-06-27
Packaged: 2017-11-15 03:37:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/522722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edwardina/pseuds/Edwardina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Simon was so many things to her now. So many more than could be quantified, so many things that wouldn't show up on an inventory list of Simon's parts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thirteen

**Author's Note:**

> This takes a look at Simon and River and their relationship from a somewhat sexual standpoint without pushing all the way over into actual incest.

River once found Simon masturbating on his bed, the bed linens a rigid bridge between his knees. She was eight, Simon fifteen, and it was only after a mortified Simon jerked his pajamas back up and explained what he was doing to her that River understood the why of it. River was smart. She'd read all about reproduction. She knew that men had penises and women had vaginas and when men ejaculated inside women it often resulted in fertilized eggs, which became fetuses, which became babies. She had seen black and white illustrations of the reproductive systems and knew mons, labia, clitoris, anus. But she was also eight, and Simon had gotten gentle thatches of hair under his arms and kissed a girl after a dance, and there was a world between them, and River didn't _really_ understand, then.

"It just feels good. And all boys do it."

"I know," River had said nonchalantly, because Simon was so uncomfortable it made her want to be flippant. She leaned against the back of his door importantly. "I know all about boys. The brains of males are hard-wired to reproduce. You're all animals," she added.

At this, Simon scrubbed his face and said into his hands, "River, will you _please_ knock next time."

"Next time, lock the door," advised River.

And at breakfast the next morning, Simon could barely look at her. 

 

***

 

She was thirteen before the embarrassment was returned, and was in the process of pulling her dress from its hanger when her bedroom door opened and Simon froze with one hand on the jamb. River went from feeling undressed to feeling utterly naked in an instant, and let out a small shriek of surprise, whirling around and tucking her arms around her chest. She was flat as could be, but in the last two years the rosy protrusions of her nipples had largened and become more sensitive, become breasts, and Simon couldn't just _see_ them!

"... I'm sorry," Simon uttered softly, and behind River, the door creaked. With her heart pounding, River looked wildly over her shoulder and saw through the small sliver of space between the door and the jamb that Simon had turned and closed his eyes. After a moment, his muffled voice said, "I thought you'd be dressed already. Sorry."

"It's okay," River said waveringly. "I was just doing my hair." Her skin prickled with self-consciousness as she raced to unzip the back of her dress and step into it. The feel of the skirt sent tingles up her legs, and somewhere in the muddle of embarrassment, River recognized her body's responsiveness. The crackle and heat of the fire in her fireplace became real and loud, and the wood of the floor cold and hard beneath her stocking feet. Her nipples ached a little against the gown's stiff bodice, and her fingers fumbled with the zipper in the back.

Why couldn't Simon have just _knocked_? Wasn't that just common decency?

Warm knuckles brushed against hers as they took over the zipper for her, and behind her, Simon's voice was soft and apologetic.

"Nice dress."

"Thanks."

The zip was done, and now Simon was tying the black satin sash that looped around the top of the bodice. She caught a halved reflection of them in her bureau mirror and studied Simon's gentle, serious face. His movements were all deliberate and skilled, like he was stitching her up again after cutting her open. He was wearing his suit, too - all pressed and ready, cravat tucked benignly into his black vest - and his hair looked freshly cut.

"Are you sure you want me to go?" he asked her, as if fully expecting his trip home from MedAcad meant nothing and that River was certain to be mortified by his presence at the ball, like her waving him and begging him to go hadn't actually happened. She rolled her eyes at him, and he caught her in the mirror.

"You're not going to tell me to go with Arthur Jaxon, are you?" she asked. "That's all Mother's been telling me for the past two weeks."

"What's wrong with Arthur Jaxon?" Simon asked innocently.

"He only wants sex," River replied, and Simon's eyes reflexively widened.

" _Oh_. Oh - well... then. I see."

When he stepped away, River snickered to herself, tugged the bodice of her dress up just a little more. Cheerfully, she moved to step into her slippers, feeling much better now that Simon was the discomfited one.

"Anyway, none of the boys in my class can dance," she told Simon unforgivingly, and bent, limber, to fasten the buckles on her shoes. They had a slight heel, which reminded her: "And I'm taller than all of them."

"That's quite typical of boys your age," remarked her brother. Buckled up, River straightened and grinned at him.

"Boys my age and _you_ ," she said, and danced out of the way as Simon reached out with a gleam in his eye to pinch at her ticklish sides. She almost needn't have bothered. Simon gave up on the chase much sooner than he would have before he left for MedAcad and started acting so grown-up.

"Well, I can't dance either," he pointed out.

"I know," River said light-heartedly. "But at least you took lessons."

And he had, so even though he stumbled a bit through some of the group dances, River still felt grown up and elegant as Simon held her by the waist and lead her through waltz after waltz that night and they made fun of Arthur Jaxon and his date.

It was easy to pretend Simon wasn't her brother at all when their chests pressed together and when she caught the shyest hints of cologne behind his ears, both of which made her feel a little faint.

It was past two in the morning when they finally got home and found their mother waiting for them on the couch with a novel, mugs of honeyed tea, and a tired smile, and the spell ended.

 

***

 

The inn where Simon was staying was old and creaky and (built in 2446, staff of thirteen -- _13, prime number, imperfect, unlucky, 1101, the only positive integer that is the fourth root of the sum of the squares of two successive positive integers, the age of maturity_ \-- brass plumbing, mice, two murders, seven other rooms booked but only two of those occupied, and) had a claw-footed tubs just like the ones at the Tam Estate, one of which Simon was easing River into. The water was too hot and River's skin hurt but she sank into it gratefully, naked and knock-kneed.

Simon had bought his own soap even though it made his stomach lurch a little with guilt, because it was expensive, and River wanted to say she had two hundred credits in her purse, but her purse was at the Academy and _The Academy hurt_. Blue Sun, Blue Sun, blue hands, blue light, blue Simon came to get her. River gasped for breath and plunged herself fully under the water, somehow feeling the cashmere soap's paper wrapping being torn apart in her hands as if they were Simon's hands and oh - it smelled like home, just like home...

An hour later Simon was pulling her up by the shoulders desperately, saying, "River. River," over and over.

His mind was like the soap. His thoughts were slipping, panicked, out of his grasp, and thrusting into River's brain, bubbling, snapping, thousands. Thoughts that weren't words like you read they were in books. Thoughts that were emotion, fear, pictures, feelings, synapses firing without provocation, gunfire loud and random, mindbullets. _Drowning._

"Not," gasped River.

Simon seemed like he was going to shatter like spun glass, or his mind did, even though he was hoisting River back up against the smooth of the bathtub and wiping her wet hair back from her eyes.

"I don't want you to do that," he said, with measured perfection. The way Simon spoke was like music. Perfect timbre. Perfect rhythm. His voice was a gentleness almost incomprehensible. A soft, comforting blanket around River's fever-sick brain. The edges of his words so distinct and sharp they cut split her wide open. A violin. Lifting her up, pulling her against porcelain.

"Your music makes me want to dance," River said, and her chest was heaving, and tears were rolling over her cheeks.

 _Mei-mei_ , Simon's brain was supernovaing, and hesitantly, he dipped the perfect oval of soap into the water and began to lather up her spine. River closed her eyes and let him move the soap over the knives of her shoulders and thought, _Don't put me in the box, Simon, please._

But Simon couldn't seem to hear, and River was so tired, and just wanted to go home.

 

***

 

Every night, Simon put her to bed like he did when she was a little girl... back before bodies were bodies and he let her choose her nightgowns, and pulled them down over her head as she raised her arms straight up. It wasn't any different now, except River didn't have nightgowns anymore and Simon was tired and didn't have any bedtime stories to read to her. He didn't have to, because River could read his face, listen to his body as it pumped blood and took breaths and saved the impressions of Kaylee's smiles and clicked like the steely innards of a bank vault, securing the precious knowledge of what was in every drawer of Serenity's infirmary, the stock of their few belongings, of medicines, of everything he'd learned at MedAcad that could possibly mean something. Simon sat on her bed and let her card her fingers through his hair and hold on tight for as long as she wanted. As long as she needed.

"I think we'll try the ocycline tomorrow," he'd be singing, but his body would be saying something else entirely. His shoulders would say they were tired, they'd ache and tense and feel burdened. His heart would say he was sad even as it dutifully beat on. His chest would tighten with a painful love as she touched him, and River's would constrict too, and everything would spin out of control. Not enough air. Not enough anything.

"It hurts when you do that," she'd tell him, and Simon would apologize and talk about needles and numbing effects, and River would just touch him, smell him, listen to him, feel him. 

Simon was so many things to her now. 

So many more than could be quantified, so many things that wouldn't show up on an inventory list of Simon's parts.

Simon was everything.

 

***

 

There were some nights when River couldn't sleep, either because the medicine Simon was giving her didn't work or because other people on the ship were awake and making noise, usually Simon.

There were more kinds of noise on Serenity than there had ever been on Osiris. Layers upon layers. Colors. Feelings. Phantoms.

Jayne was noisy but his noise was white noise, a predictable steadiness - all physical, no mental. All tuggin' off and no dilemmas. Mal was opposite. Mal's mind roved like a wolf through long grasses, always looking for prey, always on the prowl... never safe, but often deliberate and disciplined when it came to sleep. River liked Mal's mind. It rarely kept her awake except for odd dreams of the war here and there. Book's mind was softest, like he'd drawn curtains, and she stayed away. Wash and Zoe had sex a lot, and every now and then it caught her body on fire like a breeze had blown it into her brain, but most of the time it was a sluggish comfortable feeling, their love. Like her parents had once seemed to her, just dependable and private. They felt like riding in carriages, stuck between her mother and father and feeling the steady clomp-clomp-clomp of the horse's trotting. And Kaylee made River think of birdsong outside her window at home. Casual, merry, distant, light. Kaylee nested happily, like she was waiting to lay eggs and in the meantime kept busy. When she was on board, Inara broadcast parties and men and music and the smell of perfume and male bodies and the tense feel of frustration. Inara was red.

Simon felt like a pulled muscle and a bowstring drawn taut all at once. Wearing dull. Worn silk. Wet sleeping pants.

Simon had nocturnal emissions now, just another thing that made him feel stressed, another thing that needed fixing but which he couldn't fix. When he was awake he hardly ever thought about his body's need to reproduce, unlike Jayne who thought of it always. When he slept, it took over him like a sickness. He had dreams about Kaylee sometimes that would make him twist and ejaculate and he'd radiate pleasure and guilt and annoyance and think, _Thirteen again_. Sometimes it wouldn't be a dream, just a feeling, a want, a sadness, an animalistic spike of sensation in his gut, and River would strain after it, wet between the legs. It wasn't at all like the naked women on Jayne's walls - the clockwork flatness of his release. Simon's felt like stars. Like the 'verse was made of Simon's sighs and they reverberated in her soul and exploded, sticky and clinging.

When she slept, River dreamed of lots of things. She dreamed of home, of Kaylee making Simon's birthday cake in their kitchen at home, of the Academy, of Madame Andre correcting her extensions, of the first man Mal killed, of the table where she sat every day answering questions, of butterflies, of recitals, of sitting in a claw-footed bathtub full of blood, of walls screaming, of Jayne's mother, of Simon thrusting inside her and making her whole again.

At breakfast, River would stare at Simon, and Simon would uncomfortably eat.

 

***

 

"Kaylee makes it hard to sleep," River told Simon. Simon was tidying her room for her. He did that automatically now, and never told River to do it herself, so she let him. As she spoke, he looked at her with a raised brow, then methodically shoved the travel literature Inara had given her to look at into her tiny bookcase.

"I'm sorry. What's Kaylee doing?"

Kaylee's name made Simon's heart feel different.

"She's pretty," River said, and there it was again, that feeling in Simon's chest, different than the regretful, powerful, consuming tightening that happened when Simon looked at her for a long time. It was a flutter. River tapped her chest artlessly. "Makes it tight here."

 _Yes_ , said Simon's heart, and, "Yes," said Simon, as he picked up a discarded pink dress and tried to fold it. "I mean, she's... she's pretty, yes. Does... it bother you that..."

"She wants to..." started River, then paused as words flooded her mind and she tried desperately to grab the right one, grappling for purchase in an ocean of thought. "She wants to have you, Simon, wants to nest. Wants you to... insert Tab A into Slot B. Connecting lines. Mechanically. _Sex_."

Finally. Sex. That was the word.

Across the room, her pink dress was slipping out of the clumsy square Simon had managed to get it into, and Simon was staring at her.

"River..." he said, bewildered. She could feel the gears in him slipping out of lock. The vault, busted open. Robbers crawling inside.

"This is a stick-up!" River said suddenly.

But Simon was just blinking at her. "... Did she..." He paused and looked at River's dress in his hands, as if reconsidering something. "Did she... _tell_ you that?"

"Kaylee's a bird," River answered fitfully, "and you're not. You missed a pencil. And there's two more under my shoes, and Jayne took one and I'll never get it back."

Then Simon was the one searching for words; a small feeling of peace rested against River's mind.

"You'll want to be looking very intently at your own belly-button," she murmured, as the words rose in her, whispering. Ghosts. They were early, but she'd see them again soon. They were still coming.

River's pillow was soft beneath her head. Serenity hummed around her; engine whirr, air circulating from lungs to recycling units and back again, the sputter of Wash's snores, the clank of Jayne lifting weights. She breathed in their air. They breathed in hers.

"I'll buy you some new ones as soon as I can," Simon finally said, but River was already half asleep.

 

***

 

Only after Miranda came control, and clarity, and Kaylee. It was like waking up from a dream. Waking up and realizing you were late for class. Waking up and remembering the problems you'd forgotten while you slept. Waking up on the wrong side of the bed, as River's mother used to say. River watched Kaylee and Simon at breakfast, knowing what they'd just done hours earlier, knowing that Simon had put himself in Kaylee and kissed her mouth and fucked her like he'd never fucked anyone before.

With Kaylee it wasn't the proper words. With Kaylee it was tits and cock and pussy and fucking and getting off, and the words made Simon uncomfortable. That made River happy, at least. What made her unhappy was that Simon left her with Inara while he went to fuck Kaylee, like he wanted her out of the way while they did it.

Inara didn't even blink when River turned from the shuttle doorway and said bitterly, "He's not really leaving me here so you can paint my fingernails and curl my hair. He doesn't want me around while he fucks Kaylee." She just poured them tea, like River was a client; River could feel how practiced a move it was and saw how pretty Inara's wrist looked as she poured the tea. It made her feel a flush of desire out of nowhere.

"You don't sound very happy for him," Inara commented, well composed. A beautiful straight line, while River was a massive scribble.

"It's complicated," River answered angrily - angry at Simon, angry at Kaylee, angry at Inara for not being angry too.

"Yes," said Inara, "I'm sure it is."

She patted the seat where fifty men had sat before, and River slumped into it.

"He doesn't want me," she said to Inara, and though she didn't want to cry, she felt the tears coming anyway, as they so easily did from this bottomless well within her. Inara touched River's arm sympathetically, and warmth spread, and now tears fell like rain. "He doesn't love me."

"Oh, sweetie," Inara soothed, "I know for a fact - we all know for a fact - that Simon loves you very much. You're always going to be important to Simon. You're always going to be his sister, and he'll never leave you. He may be with Kaylee right now, but that doesn't mean that he'll be with Kaylee forever. He just wants his privacy, that's all. It's understandable. When people have sex, especially people who are shy like your brother, they want it to be private."

"I can feel them _fucking_ ," River sobbed savagely, and as Inara's fingers glided down her arm, she grabbed at them and clenched them with a violent tightness. She could feel Inara's surprise, feel the way she tensed in alarm and fear. "I can always feel it. He sticks me in here but it doesn't matter where I am. When Simon comes it's all I can feel and it feels so - it feels so..."

"Good?" prompted Inara gently.

River knew she could never put it into words. "Yes. No. It hurts."

Inara was petting her arm with knowing fingers. "River," she said softly, and with an earnestness that caught River from her tears and pulled her up like Simon had pulled her from the bathtub, "that must be so difficult. It must feel so intense and strange... and you must like it and hate it at the same time. You must feel a little jealous... right? And like you want to feel it first-hand? After all, you're a young woman, and what young woman doesn't long for a relationship?"

Red. Inara was smiling understandingly.

But she was wrong.

All River wanted was Simon, and Simon's door was locked.


End file.
